


no harm will come of this

by peggyolson



Category: Deadpool (Movieverse), Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Aged-Up Peter Parker, Deaf Clint Barton, Flash Thompson is an influencer, M/M, Mutual Pining, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Wade's Fleabag-style fourth wall breaks, affectionate breaking & entering, one-eyed Thor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-08-20 07:43:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20224285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peggyolson/pseuds/peggyolson
Summary: wade keeps crashing through peter's window. somehow, that's the least of his problems.





	no harm will come of this

**Author's Note:**

> me: "i want to read a very specific spideypool fic"
> 
> me: "like one where peter and wade are human disasters and wade is coping with his own shit the only way he knows how and peter's caught between adolescence and adulthood and despite all the love he has in his life he's still like 'uh oh, i have a crush on the fucked up one'"
> 
> me: "i want that but i also want to pick and choose stuff from the MCU and the comics and combine it all into my own hybrid universe"
> 
> me: "i guess i have to write it myself"
> 
> thus: 18k of complete bullshit
> 
> this has truly been two years in the making, shouts to claire who made it all possible

A muted crash sounds off behind the door and Peter can feel his already delicate floorboards rattle threateningly under the weight of it. One eye cracks open. 

He’s sleeping. He _ was _ sleeping.

“You gotta stop, man,” Peter says, stumbling out of his meat locker of a bedroom into the boiling hellscape that is his living room in mid-June.

The window leading out to the fire escape has been thrown open, curtains hanging off the rod. An entire shelf is tipped over. Deadpool lies in the middle of the room, tapping on the shattered screen of his iPhone. An enormous pile of weapons — guns, knives, katanas — sits next to him.

“Mornin’, pumpkin,” he chirps. “I bought breakfast.” He reaches into one of the many hidden pockets on his suit and pulls out a mushy piece of gum that he presents to Peter.

Peter rubs at his eyes. “Why are you wet?”

“Because the fire hydrants in this city are just too damn easy to open,” Deadpool says. He’s still on the floor. He likes being on the floor, which is crazy because he’s like a thousand years old. “Heard a few kids say they were hot and stuck outside all day and I wanted to lend a helping hand to our nation’s youth. Well, your nation. Anyway, now I’m laying low for an hour. Three hours. Okay, fine, you twisted it out of me, five weeks, max.”

“I have a door,” Peter says. He can’t process the rest of it, not yet, not when his apartment looks the way it does. “It’s a good door. Opens and closes. You can knock on it. Things don’t fall over when you walk through it.”

He doesn’t really know why he keeps bothering to put the shelf back up — principle, maybe.

“You like that door more than you like me,” Deadpool accuses. He lifts up the bottom of his mask so Peter can see Wade’s frat boy smirk underneath.

“It’s a good door,” Peter says again, firm. “I’m going back to sleep, ‘kay?”

“What? Webs, _ noooo_. Hang out, it’s Saturday. We should party.”

“It’s nine A.M.,” Peter says slowly, the way you talk to someone with brain damage. Deadpool lurches unsteadily to his feet and stands toe-to-toe with Peter, looming over him like a tree. He tugs the rest of the mask off and then there Wade is, all of him, the scarred ruins of his face on full display as they slant into something resembling a grin. Peter tilts his head.

He’ll fix the shelf later.

*

He moved out of May’s six months ago after a particularly rough incident where she found him sewing up his own gunshot wound in the bathroom at four in the morning. Telling her they’d caught the guys hadn’t made her feel any better, so he started apartment hunting the next day. She helped him get settled, staring apprehensively at the dilapidated building and trying her best to be supportive even though the shower was literally in the kitchen.

“You have the microwave,” May said.

“Yep,” Peter said.

“And the lightbulbs,” May said.

“Uh huh,” Peter said.

May eyed him suspiciously. “And you can put in the AC yourself?”

“I think so,” Peter said, just to fuck with her.

“You _ think _—” She stopped, pursing her lips when he grinned. “Okay, alright, smartass.”

“I’m an hour away by train,” Peter said, gentle. “And like twenty minutes tops by, you know.” He pointed his chin to where his suit was hung carefully in the closet, the first and only thing in there so far.

May’s frown deepened, so he shut up and let her hug him, rested his head on her shoulder, closed his eyes.

It wasn’t like he could blame her. The place definitely super sucked, but Peter had an in with the landlord and he’d given him the best deal out of everywhere he looked.

It had gone like this:

“Kate said you’re lookin’ for a place,” Hawkeye The Dude said, sidling up to him from seemingly nowhere. “To live.”

“Yeah,” Peter said, webbing one of the alien half-bird half-fish things into submission before it could sneak attack Falcon from behind. It’s always aliens lately. “Yeah, I’m looking, why? Need a roommate?”

Hawkeye The Dude winced, reaching up to fiddle with one of his ears. “Dang it. Stop ringing — aw, hearing aid — nah, but I got a building. In Bed-Stuy.”

“Oh, right,” Peter said. He saw Clint at least once a week and had somehow managed to forget about his third identity as a landlord, after Avenger but just before friendly dirtbag. “How much do you charge?” 

Clint shrugged. “I don’t know. How much can you pay?”

“Sweet,” Peter said, and leaned back so he and Hawkeye The Dude could take their shot at the biggest alien bird-fish together.

*

So, yeah, it’s an apartment.

Like, if someone had to classify it as something that classification would technically have to be ‘apartment,’ but only for lack of a better word. (‘Hovel’ just seemed mean.) It’s on the fifth floor and the elevator’s broken, which Clint “forgot” to mention before showing him the place. It has a gnat problem and most of the outlets are busted and the ceiling leaks, but man, it’s his.

And Wade’s, sometimes. Deadpool’s. Whatever.

“Dude,” Ned says, “You let Deadpool _ live _ here? Isn’t he like, dangerous?”

“_I’m _dangerous,” Peter says. They’re re-building the Lego Millennium Falcon, a casualty in the latest destruction of his living room. Peter thought Ned was going to scream when he told him what had happened.

Ned squints. “You save cats from trees. He kills people. For money.”

Peter crosses his arms over his chest. “Not really anymore. Also, I’m pretty dangerous. I don’t even — he doesn’t _ live _ here. It’s just, like, open to him when he needs it. It’s superhero stuff.”

It’s definitely not superhero stuff. He’s pretty sure all the other superheroes he knows have their own houses and mortgages and stuff, meanwhile he’s been presented with no concrete evidence that Wade even showers on a regular basis. 

They’d all warned him about Deadpool, that’s the thing. All the Avengers and Avenger-adjacents, that is. They’d given him warning after warning about Deadpool. At this point, it was all on Peter.

No one seems to have a straight answer as to exactly _ why _ he’s so much trouble, though. The former paid assassin thing doesn’t help, Peter guesses, and neither does the whole ‘annoying the shit out of everyone’ thing. According to Mr. Stark, he used to be in the X-Men (which Deadpool denied) while Dr. Banner insisted he’s _ still _ in the X-Men (which Deadpool also denied). Captain Marvel had only smirked, rolled her eyes, and asked, “_Him_, Parker? Really?” 

“He’s harmless,” Clint said. “That’s a lie. Not harmless. He actually causes a lot of destruction, like, wherever he goes. He’s pretty Bad News Bears but he’s… you know, he’s loyal.”

Sure! Loyal.

He’s just, well. He’s always around. Always. It doesn’t matter how many creative, long-winded ways Mr. Stark comes up with to tell him to get lost, or how many flat, unimpressed glares Black Widow levels him with, or even that one time Black Panther pointed at him and simply asked, “Why?” No matter what, the dude doesn’t seem to care, and after Peter saved him from being shot at twice and helped gather up his errant body parts once (and_ only _ once_, never _again) Deadpool had taken a liking to him. Or Wade had.

Peter can’t always tell the difference.

*

Sometimes Peter drops down to Hawkeye Squared’s window, usually in the morning(/late afternoon) when he’s out of coffee or when he knows Clint’s ordered pizza. They’re never surprised to see him and they always look worse than he feels, even when his body is covered in scratches and his ribs are cracked.

“Did Deadpool break your window again?” Clint yawns and rubs at the band-aid on his jaw, passing by to hand Peter a steaming mug. The walls really are that thin and Peter’s life really has become that predictable.

“No,” Peter says, scratching behind Lucky’s ear when he butts his mangy head against his leg. “But he knocked a shelf over.”

Kate emerges in one of Clint’s t-shirts and perches herself on the counter. “The same one?” She signs every word she says with quick, practiced efficiency. Clint’s told him that his Stark hearing aids work well, that he’s a good lip reader, but Peter’s still trying to learn. It seems like the thing to do, after all Clint’s done for him. So far he’s only mastered _ hello _ and _ where’s the dog food _ but he’s working on it. “You could just move the shelf.”

“I don’t know, maybe.” He scorches his tongue on a sip of coffee — black, Clint always makes it black and Kate hoards the sugar — and adds needlessly, “He’s sleeping now, so.”

“Okay,” Kate says, and gives him a look. 

Kate does that, gives him those _ looks_, and Peter still doesn’t think she has any room to be giving anyone looks, not with the way Clint’s eyeing her over the pot he’s drinking straight from. It just doesn’t seem fair, considering.

Everyone pauses when Mariah Carey’s voice blares, muffled, above them. Clint lifts an eyebrow in Peter’s direction.

“Gotta go,” Peter says, leaving his mug on the floor and backflipping away.

*

“The guy held me underwater for _ ten minutes_,” Deadpool says, by way of greeting. He’s damp from head to toe when he sits, feet dangling off the edge of the building. Peter starts to ask _ what guy? _but Deadpool continues, having clearly been in the middle of re-telling the story to himself before he’d even arrived, “Ten! I think it was ten, I lost consciousness for a little bit. Saw my life flash before my eyes, went right back to the day my father died, when I moved to Poland and started subverting gender binaries so I could get myself an education. I think I won an Oscar.”

“You left your Crocs in my bathroom again,” Peter says. He’d almost busted his face tripping over them that morning.

“No, wait, it was a Golden Globe,” Deadpool says. “_Yentl_. What do you know about Babs Streisand, teen angel?”

Peter thinks about it. “She was Seth Rogen’s mom in that one movie, right?”

Deadpool shakes his head. “_What _ is that school of yours even for? They’re not teaching you shit. What’d you do to my Crocs?”

He’s used to the whiplash, shooting back an easy, “Threw ’em out.”

“I will pick them up tomorrow.” Deadpool swivels his head around a few times, rolls his shoulders, kicks his legs back and forth. For a moment it’s just them in their suits, enjoying the breeze. Up this high, the city is almost peaceful. “So I’ve been reading about Ireland. I stole a book from the library.”

“The library’s free.”

Deadpool shoots him the finger guns. “Not when you’re banned for life from all New York branches. Anyway, Ireland.”

He does this a lot, finds Peter wherever he’s hanging out and just… sits. Talks about anything on his mind: a song he can’t get out of his head, a TV show he remembers from his childhood, all the countries he’s almost died in.

Peter always listens. He doesn’t know why. Sometimes he has questions —

(“How did they not know a spin-off wouldn’t work without Bea Arthur?”

“You’re preaching to the_ fuckin’ _choir, Petey!”)

— but mostly he takes in the stream-of-consciousness monologue as it comes. It tells him a lot and it tells him nothing and Deadpool doesn’t really ask him anything in return. Sometimes he’ll turn his head and go somewhere else, almost like he’s disappearing, almost like he’s having a side conversation with someone only he can see. The one time Peter brought it up he’d only gotten a half-laugh and a flippant _ whaaaaat? Sounds like you’re losing it, Webs _ in response.

Today it’s Ireland. Deadpool’s never been there but he did stab an Irish guy in the chest with a brick once (it’s possible, he swears), which must count for something, and did Peter know that mustaches were once illegal there, or that St. Patrick wasn’t even originally _ from _Ireland?

“He’s from Wales, I think. Like Catherine Zeta-Jones. Catherine Zeta-Jones is basically the reason a bunch of drunk white guys named Michael wear fifty shades of green and get fifty shades of arrested for public intoxication once a year.” And before Peter can say anything else Karen’s voice chimes in with an alert — carjacking, two guys, four blocks away — and Peter turns to Deadpool, who shuts up right away, the white eyes of his mask somehow looking expectant.

“Want to bust up some neighborhood crime? _ No swords_.” Deadpool’s disappointment registers with a sigh and the loud clattering of metal meeting concrete as he tosses the enormous weapon over his shoulder.

“Fuck, you’re strict,” Deadpool sighs, light and unbothered, arms securing themselves around Peter’s middle as they dive off the roof.

*

Mr. Stark refuses to drive into the neighborhood (“If I go to Bed-Stuy, I smell like Bed-Stuy for a week — uncollected garbage and Juul smoke”) so Peter meets him uptown, usually at Stark Tower, which in all honesty is much lamer than he’d always thought it’d be. In reality it’s mostly a lot of glass offices and ringing phones. Once he’d seen Captain America in a tie and that had been… disappointing.

He goes so Mr. Stark can make adjustments on his suit and also because Peter secretly thinks he likes having him around. They have a fun back and forth, like Dorothy and Sophia, if they’d been Avengers.

“You’re not an Avenger,” Mr. Stark says.

“You said I was,” Peter reminds him. They’ve only been in his workshop a few minutes and Mr. Stark’s already swatted his hand away from at least eight different robots. The rule was that Peter could only touch stuff under heavy supervision, but it was a dumb rule.

Mr. Stark ignores the correction. “And did you just make a _ Golden Girls reference_? How old are you again? Four?”

“I’m nineteen,” Peter says, holding his hand out for Dum-E to shake.

“And Betty White is a ripe two-thousand. I never took you for the anachronistic type.”

“It’s all on Hulu.” And Peter knows he sounds a little defensive when Mr. Stark gives him an inscrutable look, which: okay. He doesn’t need to know that the only reason Peter’s watching _The_ _Golden Girls_ is because he got tired of Wade ruining every episode. The jokes just didn’t hit the same.

Oddly embarrassed, Peter changes the subject: “Am I getting my suit back today?”

“Ten minutes,” Mr. Stark says, watching Peter suspiciously before turning his back on him, fingers flying across the screen of a tablet. “So, what’s up, what’s happening, how’s your week, kid? I told your aunt I’d make sure you didn’t get eaten by any sea monsters — she really said sea monsters, she’s adorable — or worse, plunge into a state of financial ruin. Perish the thought.” Mr. Stark swivels his head around just in time to catch Peter reaching for a small gold bot. “Seems like you’re in one piece, unless you’ve been body-snatched, which happens. Don’t touch that.”

“I didn’t get body-snatched,” Peter says, throwing himself down in a chair that molds perfectly to his butt. “Whoa, awesome.”

“Sounds like something someone who got body-snatched would say. Hey, you’re gonna screw with all the settings, get up.” Mr. Stark pushes a stool toward him. “Hanging out with any unsavory characters? Pepper told me to ask about that.”

Peter shrugs, thinking back to batting Wade’s stupid, horrible, not at all hilarious baby hand out of his face earlier that morning. There’d been an explosion, see, or that’s how Wade had explained it to him when he was bleeding out on Peter’s fire escape, but it wasn’t anything he thought Mr. Stark needed to know about. He doesn’t like to lie but he’s unfortunately gotten pretty good at it. “I saw the Winter Soldier at CVS the other day, does he count as unsavory?”

“Absolutely, but don’t tell Cap I said that,” Mr. Stark says, giving Peter another long look before adding, “And I think he’s going by… White Wolf these days.”

“That’s way cooler,” Peter says, awed. He catches the ghost of a smile on Mr. Stark’s face as he turns back to his screen.

“You’re doing your… homework and everything, yes? They still make you kids do homework?” 

“It’s June.” See? Truth.

Mr. Stark had offered to pay for school when he got accepted — a full ride at MIT was like pocket change to him, and there’d been weeks of back-and-forth before Peter finally convinced him he was happy, really, to go to City College. He’d barely come around to it and since then Peter thinks he’s felt like he needs to check in, be the responsible surrogate caretaker figure even though Peter’s an adult who doesn’t need a babysitter. He’s not Wade, who should probably have a battalion of babysitters following him at all times, but knowing him he’d find a way to get around even Care.com’s finest.

Still, Peter thinks it’s kind of nice, even if Mr. Stark won’t give his suit heat vision.

*

“This sucks,” Peter whines. He’s covered in dirt and alien goo and Deadpool’s blood from when he’d literally pulled a knife out of the guy’s back. He smells like a dumpster from when he’d been tossed in, yeah, a dumpster. He wants a large pizza and to sleep for a week.

Deadpool, similarly covered in dirt, alien goo, and his own blood, is serenely double-fisting hot dogs. There’d been a single guy on 41st and 8th with his cart still open, reading that day’s _ Post _and completely unbothered by the chaos around him. Deadpool, of course, had no money on him so Peter paid.

“Thanks for buying dinner, my sweet arachnoid. Sure you don’t want a bite?” His mask is pulled up around his ruined nose and he’s grinning as he chews.

“I’m good,” Peter mutters. He pulls his own mask up a little, just to air out. Mr. Stark had described his suit as “breathable,” but there’s not much breathing to be done in general when it’s so stiflingly hot.

Letting Deadpool in on his identity had not been part of the plan. There’d been a shootout and some light kidnapping and when the Avengers — well, Deadpool, and then the Avengers; look, it’s a long story — found him his mask had been torn to shreds.

(“_You’re a child_?” Deadpool shrieked.

“I’m _ nineteen_,” Peter rasped. “Can we get out of here?”)

That said, if you’re going to reveal a carefully guarded secret to anyone Deadpool would probably be the right guy: He doesn’t have a lot of people in his life and he loves secrets.

“Is your back okay?” Peter winces, knowing it is. He’ll never get comfortable with that particular element of Deadpool’s… whole thing.

“I don’t even feel it,” Deadpool chirps, licking some mustard off his thumb. “I mean, I do, it’s the kind of pulsating pain no words in the English language would ever be able to describe, but so is everything going on up here.” He gestures vaguely to his head. “Is this a good bit? I’m thinking of trying stand-up.”

“It’s a little dark,” Peter says, tugging his mask down so he can hide his grin.

“Hey, is _ yours _okay?” Deadpool stops them and bodies Peter around, surprisingly gentle hands skimming over his shoulders. Colonel Rhodes had once told him to never turn his back to Deadpool, but suddenly Peter becomes aware that there is some kind of badness happening behind him, that his body is throbbing. Oh, that can’t be good. Oh, Mr. Stark’s going to kill him.

“It was okay ‘til you touched it,” Peter hisses, angling away.

“It was not okay before he touched it,” Karen pipes up from inside his suit.

“Now, I’m no doctor but I think that means it was never actually okay,” Deadpool says, and then he’s grabbing for Peter’s biceps, holding him in place. His grip tightens and for a second, just one fleeting second, Peter forgets how to breathe. “Wanna web us home so we can take care of this?”

_ Home. _Peter clears his throat and holds out an arm, which Deadpool takes as invitation to wrap his entire self around Peter’s smaller frame, somehow managing to avoid touching the raw skin of his back. It all hurts, every bit, as they take off.

“Hey, can we stop at Dunkin’? If you get there right before they close they basically _ give _the donuts away.”

*

He gets to Union Square fifteen minutes late and drenched in sweat, pushing through what feels like hundreds of people before he finds MJ at the edge of the throng. Her sign reads, in big bold letters, _ IT DOES NOT SAY RSVP ON THE STATUE OF LIBERTY_. 

“Is that from _ Clueless_?” He thumbs at the zipper on his backpack, quadruple checking that it’s safely closed. The biggest problem with the summer is that he can’t just throw a hoodie over his suit and go, leaving Peter with paranoid visions of his bag coming open while he’s walking, his suit getting run over by a cab or falling out onto subway tracks, and then, worst of all, having to grovel to Mr. Stark for a new one. Again.

“I thought it worked,” says MJ. Past the tangle of hair in her face, Peter can see she’s unimpressed when she looks at him, which is not news. “Dude, ew.” 

“I know,” Peter agrees. A guy at the front climbs on a bench to make what must be an announcement, but it’s met with some confusion.

A kid in a _ Jaws _ shirt cups his hands around his mouth and yells, “We can’t hear you!”

“I think they’re looking for a megaphone,” says a tattooed woman. “They never plan this shit well.” 

Someone behind them adds, “There’s some senator here from New Jersey, I heard.” 

Someone else shouts, “Who cares?” 

Peter nudges MJ. “How’d you hear about this?” 

“On Twitter, grandpa,” she replies, pulling a rolled-up sign out of her bag that she passes off to him. It reeks of Sharpie and is adorned with a very simple _ RESIST _ in the same blocky writing as hers. “Where the hell have you been?”

A loaded question.

Wade had split for three straight days, as he does, and showed up again in Peter’s apartment without warning at some obscure hour, as he also does. Peter doesn’t ask many questions; he learned after the first few times that he’d never get a real answer out of Wade, and that’s cool. It for real doesn’t bother him anymore, which is something Peter has gotten so good at telling himself sometimes it almost feels like he believes it.

Anyway. 

Deadpool had clattered in through the window, bringing a ridiculous amount of noise with him as he struggled to undress in the dark, his deceptively imposing frame casting shadows all over the apartment as he hopped around. Peter had bolted out of his room, webs at the ready, mask half-on, and quickly deflated when he realized the source of the disturbance. Deadpool said, “Baby boy, you look _ delicious_,” which would be enough to send anyone right back to bed. He woke later to find Wade on his couch with two boxes of cereal that they’d finished together while watching cartoons, knees knocking every time Wade laughed too hard at some bad joke.

“Tried to unplug this morning,” says Peter. “Social media cleanse. You know.”

“Uh huh,” MJ drawls. “And how’d that work out for you?” 

“It had its moments,” Peter says, thinking of Wade’s wild grin stretching across his minefield of a face.

Whatever she says next is drowned out when everyone shifts, several loud chants breaking out at once as the crowd starts to move.

*

Peter has never been great at sneaking around. May loves to tell stories about all the times she and Ben caught him trying to get into the snack cabinet as a kid, how he was always too loud, too obvious. Her favorite is the one where he, at six years old, ran out of the room with an armful of Oreos, yelling, “Don’t follow me, please!”

So, everyone knows. About Deadpool, that is. Everyone knows because they hear the things Deadpool says to him, because of the way Deadpool tries to sacrifice himself for Peter at least once a week, because Clint has definitely not kept what he thinks he’s seen to himself. Also, everyone knows because Peter is the worst secret-keeper of all time and everyone thinks it’s totally weird which, okay, they don’t even know the _ half _of it, but that’s why Peter has just made the executive decision to never speak about it — 

(Not that Peter would know what to say to them, anyway. Here is what he does know: 

He knows what Wade’s face looks like, but he never knows when he’s going to get Wade or Deadpool. He knows that when Wade is there, when he’s actually, honestly present or as close to present as he’ll ever get, the way he looks at Peter makes him feel like he’s on fire. That Deadpool likes to calls him things like _ baby boy _ and _ sweetheart_, that he used to make comments about the shape of Peter’s ass before he found out how he old he actually was under the Spider-Man suit.

He knows that last week he and the Hawkeyes were overpowered in Greenpoint, the alien monster thing that had risen out of the trash somehow getting stronger the more they shot at it. They’d been about to cut their losses and call for back-up when suddenly there was Deadpool, skidding to a halt in front of Peter to block him from the alien’s claws, katanas swinging.

He knows that, later, they’d huddled close on Peter’s couch and he’d lowered his head to Deadpool’s shoulder, tentative and wiped, and that Deadpool had hesitated a few seconds before letting his arm rest heavily around Peter.

He knows that the next morning, Peter woke up in bed and Deadpool was gone.)

— and that’s that. Bing, boom, blammo, done.

It’s easy because no one knows what to say, really, not even Mr. Stark, who _ always _ has something to say. No one is sure, no one wants to offend, no one wants to assume even though it’s obvious that they all pretty much have the same idea — the _ wrong _ idea, but the same collective wrong idea, which Peter has found can often make things that are very much _ not _ real into fact. The Mandela effect. Hivemind. Groupthink. One of those.

And by everyone, uh, yeah. Everyone.

“If you ever want to talk about anything,” _ Captain America _ says, pulling him aside with a _ hey, Queens _ after a post-battle debrief, “I’m here. We’re here. We both know how tough it can be.” He nods meaningfully, a little awkward — is _ Cap _ being _ awkward_? — at the Winter Soldier AKA White Wolf AKA Peter has no idea how to address this guy, who is standing by himself in the corner, wearing a deep frown as he goes through the process of taking off his heavy, gleaming arm. Man, to get five minutes with that arm.

Focus. Okay.

“Oh, wow,” Peter says to, again, literally _ Captain America _ and he thinks he understands what _ Captain America _is implying but also? He’s not sure he understands anything. “Thank… you. Sir.”

“You’re welcome,” _ Cap _ says, bracing his shoulder with one big all-American hand. Peter could melt, Peter could scream, Peter could excuse himself but _ Cap _won’t stop looking at him like he wants to say something else, which means that a few seconds of silence pass, which means Peter starts to squirm and, without really thinking about it, salutes him.

“Thank you,” he repeats, sweat starting to bead on his forehead.

“Oh my god,” comes a sudden interjection and then there’s Winter White Soldier Wolf, materializing at _ Captain America’s _elbow. “I told you not to say anything, you idiot. Kid, whatever he told you to do? Do the opposite.”

“Buck —” _ Captain America _ starts to protest, but WWSW cuts him off with a loud _ nope, enough _ and gives Peter a tight smile as he leads _ Captain America _away with a hand on his arm.

“What the hell,” Peter breathes. Then again, “_What the hell._”

*

The summer stretches on in a heat-drenched haze.

When Peter’s not stripped down and sprawled in front of his air conditioner, he’s helping out at May’s office for some side cash that he and Ned end up blowing at the movies. He camps out at Petco for hours with Flash, who won’t get a dog even though he _ obviously _wants a dog, and lets MJ drag him around the city to see bands he’s never heard of. He takes apart a VHS player he finds on the sidewalk and refurbishes his own Xbox.

He helps save the world and then skips the debriefs to eat Cuban sandwiches in the park with Kate. Mr. Stark and Ms. Potts pay him to watch Pixar movies with Morgan while they see Broadway shows and have dinner at expensive restaurants. He stops two attempted robberies at the bodega on his block. He helps his seventy-one-year-old neighbor bring her groceries upstairs every Sunday. Wade doesn’t stop crashing through his window, no matter how many times Peter asks, until he does.

Those are normal, the disappearances. Normal and frequent. Peter has never gone looking for him and he never will. He’s learning not to expect anything, and it’s working out well for him. Well-ish.

It’s fine.

*

In August, Peter redecorates.

He moves his bed, hangs some pictures, finally puts out the welcome mat May got him when he first moved in. Ned and Kate come over to “help” and they give Peter shit about the stupid shelf for ten whole minutes.

“You guys are assholes, my shelf looks awesome,” he says, swiping the bag of pretzels just as Ned reaches for them.

“Can you at least move our opus to safety?” Ned gestures helplessly to the Millennium Falcon, recently rebuilt and beautiful as ever.

“That’s my only shelf, dude,” Peter says.

“Get another shelf,” Kate says. She has her feet up on the coffee table and she’s been filing her nails for what feels like hours. “There are so many places to buy shelves. Haven’t you ever been to IKEA?”

“It’s not about —”

“Amazon?” Ned supplies.

“Guys —”

“Target,” Kate suggests.

“My mom got shelves from Target once,” Ned says, nodding sagely.

Peter groans, rubbing his hands down his face. “It doesn’t even matter! I don’t think it’s going to be a problem anymore.” Which isn’t a lie: It’s been two weeks since he’s seen Wade, not that Peter’s keeping track, but it has. He doesn’t know where Wade goes or why he doesn’t text or make any attempt to contact Peter despite using his apartment like a free Airbnb when he does decide he wants to act like a halfway normal person, and that’s fine. Peter is cool and Peter is chill and everything is fine.

Kate blinks. “_Whaaaaat _ is that about?”

“Nothing,” Peter mutters. He reaches for his hammer and the wood handle immediately splinters in the tight hold of his grip. Ned lets out a low _dude_, and Kate makes the same face she makes when Clint cracks a terrible dad joke. Then she beckons him over, tweezers at the ready.

*

They leave after it gets dark and Peter hasn’t even shut the door all the way when he senses Deadpool’s presence. His pulse speeds: The Deadpool-prickle feels different than the anything-else-prickle. Not better or worse, just… different. He holds his breath, doesn’t move, waits.

“I was waiting for Anthony Michael Hall and Molly Ringwald to get lost,” Deadpool says, his voice and body close, very, very close. All of Peter’s internal alarms go off at once, _ danger, danger, danger. _ If he were to lean back just a bit he knows he’d feel Deadpool’s chest against his shoulder.

“That’s my friend Ned,” Peter says, throat dry. “And you know Kate, she’s a Hawkeye.”

“Oh! I like her, she has a ‘tude.”

He turns and is surprised to see Wade’s face, his real human face, staring back at him.

“Hi,” is all Peter can manage.

“Hi,” Wade agrees. “I like the change of scenery. Very Urban Outfitters home section.”

“Come on,” Peter sighs. He’s not Urban Outfitters. He basically doesn’t even have enough money to look in the window of an Urban Outfitters. “How long have you been here?”

“You sound mad, are you mad? God, you’re adorable when you’re mad.”

Peter frowns.

Up close he can see the ridges of Wade’s skin, the grooves and bumps that cover his skull. Peter only knows about the cancer, the serum, and his would-be death from reading the lengthy file Nick Fury kept on him. He’d always wondered what Wade had looked like, before.

When Peter says nothing, Wade seems to think better of it and adds, “My ride’s on a _ date _ with a _ girl_, can you believe it? I’m proud of him for growing a personality and everything but we can’t all trapeze around this city and the last time I tried to take the subway I got into a mild disagreement with a mariachi band.”

Peter makes a sound that’s half-cough, half-laugh and side-steps Wade. He busies himself with picking up after their mini party: empty bags of snacks, soda cans, Kate’s nail file, the scatter of screws and bolts on the floor.

“I ran into Black Widow again today,” Wade says. He pulls one glove off with his teeth, then the other. “She does _ not _ like me. Guess I only have luck with one spider around these parts. Ba-dum-tss. I’m still workshopping that one.”

Peter’s eyebrows raise. “What happened?”

“Some maniac with a gun walked into a dentist’s office. And then we fought a bad guy!”

Peter blinks.

“Did you get it? Because I’m the —”

“You’re the maniac with the gun, no, yeah, I got it. You didn’t kill anyone, did you?” It’s a total joke and also not at all a joke.

Wade waves a dismissive hand. “No one important to the story. The dentist is alive and a bunch of kids get to have their fillings rescheduled. That’s why we do this great work.”

“Come on, you’re all those kids’ new favorite superhero,” Peter says, grinning when Wade laughs. “How’d it go with Black Widow?”

“She threatened me,” Wade says, casual and fond. “We have a nice relationship. I think she’s a little protective over you.”

“Oh, jeez,” Peter says around a groan. “What now?”

“The usual, I’m a terrible influence, you’re on a good path, I’m getting in the way of that, I should be committed...” Wade ticks every item off on his fingers, resting his feet on the coffee table. He’s unfazed. “I can’t disagree, but I think that last thing should be a separate issue.”

And that, well. It makes Peter’s mounting frustration spike, the thought of anyone speaking for him, of anyone thinking they know what’s best for him. The fact of it is that no one seemed to care when he was fifteen and being outfitted for custom web shooters but now that he’s trying to — whatever, figure himself out, have a life of his own, everyone seems to have an opinion on it. Everyone seems to think he’s the same wide-eyed kid with dead parents and a dead uncle and a whole lot of responsibility on his shoulders.

Plus, they don’t even know Wade. Not at all.

“That’s… really lame,” is what Peter has to say. Some part of him still can’t bring himself to go off on Black Widow, of all people, even if it’s only in front of Wade. He leaves the room for a second, throws the trash away, washes his hands just for something to do. When he gets back he adds, “She shouldn’t say that stuff to you. None of them should.”

Wade looks away and goes to whatever place he goes to and it happens fast enough that Peter might not have noticed if he weren’t looking directly at him. It’s as bizarre as ever to watch and his brow is still furrowed when Wade comes back, meeting his eyes.

“You never cease to amaze me, Webs,” is not what he’s expecting to hear, but it just about knocks him out with its sincerity. Wade doesn’t give him a chance to respond, just barrels on: “Hey, sorry for the —” He moves his head back and forth a little, wincing sympathetically. He’s talking about his face. He’s apologizing for his face. “You know. Voldemort chic. My mask got ripped up subduing that anti-dental hygiene pile of shit and Tony won’t do the repairs so I have to go through third party vendors and they take _ so _long and I know for a fact I’m getting ripped off, you’d think having connections in web-slinging places would —”

“I don’t mind,” Peter cuts in, stopping Wade before he goes in his usual incomprehensible direction. For whatever reason, he just can’t handle it. “You don’t have to say you’re sorry. Don’t be sorry. Not for that, anyway, there’s a lot of other stuff you should probably apologize for.”

“Is this about my Crocs again?” Wade says, but his eyes are big and his mouth is set in a thin line. Peter’s not used to seeing him like this, and he’s especially not used to the hyper-focused way Wade is staring at him. He stares and stares and now would be a great time for an alien invasion, Peter thinks.

“No,” he says, the moment of honesty, of courage, going as quickly as it came, not even long enough for him to make sense of Wade’s expression. “What episode are we on?”

Without missing a beat, Wade replies, “The one where Blanche’s gay brother comes out. Really progressive stuff for an ‘80s sitcom.”

“Cool,” Peter says around the lump in his throat.

*

A week before his birthday, May Facetimes him from the grocery store.

“Hey, what do you want for dinner?”

“Tonight?” Peter’s crawling on the ceiling of a storage facility on Long Island, scanning the floor below. “Are we having dinner tonight? Was I —”

“If I was meaner I’d totally trick you into thinking we had plans tonight. No, for your birthday.”

“My birthday?” He spots an oversized shipping crate and Karen’s trackers detect two bodies inside. Peter can hear banging and muted cries for help. “Hey! I found them!”

“_Where_? I swear to god I’ve checked every inch of this place,” comes Falcon’s voice.

“No one move, I’m on my way,” Black Widow says.

“It’s funny because we physically can’t move,” Kate shouts.

“Who’d you find?” May asks.

“Clint and Kate — uh, the Hawkeyes. They’re fine, May.”

“We’ve been better,” Kate says.

He mutes the other lines and smiles at May and doesn’t tell her that he’d completely forgotten his birthday was coming up. Maybe Thai, he suggests.

*

“You did — what?”

“Do you not want him here? I figured, you know.” May trails off with an indistinct wave of one hand, the other busy icing what’s sure to be an inedible cupcake.

“Oh my god,” Peter groans, slumping against the counter.

“I invited him through Facebook,” May says.

“You invited Tony Stark to a birthday party through Facebook,” Peter says, gravely. “There’s no way he has a Facebook. Does he even have a Facebook?”

“To _ your _birthday party, kid. He has that page, all the people ’like’ him or whatever.”

“May, that’s a fan page, you invited a _ fan page _ to the party,” Peter says, willing her to understand the severity of the situation. 

“What’s the difference?” May asks, bumping him out of the way with her hip so she can grab a pitcher of lemonade from the fridge.

The thought of Mr. Stark in his expensive suit and tinted sunglasses making small talk with his friends, of Mr. Stark in May’s living room _ again _— it was too much, it was borderline unbearable. Peter works overtime trying to get the guy to take him seriously and this just… it’s a bad look. The only small bit of relief in the humiliation of his aunt extending an invitation to a Facebook page, most likely run by some Stark Industries intern, that existed only for fans to share Iron Man memes was the fact that the person in question would never see it.

He makes a mental note to deactivate all of May’s social media accounts before the day is over.

*

“Is Scarlet Witch going to show up?”

“No.”

“How about Thor?”

“Nope.”

“Ant… Dude? Super-Ant.”

“Ant-Man, and no.”

“His name is _ Ant-Man_? How did I not know that? He needs better branding.”

“Ned, it’s a no superheroes party,” Peter says. He’d been clear about that when May had offered to put the whole thing together. _ I promise you they don’t want to hang out with me_, he’d explained, much to her disappointment.

“But May told me she invited Tony Stark.”

“She —” Peter sighs, glancing over to where his aunt and MJ are deep in conversation. “She didn’t. She thinks she did but she… didn’t.”

“Bummer. I bet his gift would’ve been sick,” Ned says. “Hey, is Deadpool coming?”

“_No_,” Peter says firmly, his face heating. “Why would — no. No superheroes, and — there’s no way he even knows it’s my birthday. It’s for friends, and we’re not — _ you’re _ my friend, he’s not my friend, this is a _ friends party_, and I — okay? So.”

Ned’s eyebrows raise. “Dude.”

“I’m going to have a cupcake,” Peter says, stalking off to the snack table.

*

For the record, the cupcakes _ are _ inedible. Which Flash makes sure to tell him.

*

After the candles are blown out and the cake (store-bought, to everyone’s relief) is eaten, May announces that the party — which isn’t even much of a party, really, just a few of Peter’s friends and a few of May’s — is moving out of her apartment and onto the roof.

He perches himself on the building’s ledge, a Coke can in his hands as he half-listens to Flash and MJ bicker about whether or not Instagram is harvesting user data. (MJ argues yes, Flash just wants to know if it’ll get him more followers.) May stops by their little corner to pin an oversized button to his shirt — it reads “Birthday Boy” in big orange letters — and has had enough wine to sweep him into a clunky two-step, laughing when he accidentally treads on her toes.

The humidity of the afternoon is breaking into something more breathable and the twinkling Christmas lights May strung around them stand out against the backdrop of the sunset. That ever-present sense of danger, the one that pushes him to spring into action even when he really, really doesn’t want to is quiet for once, as if crime and imminent death took a day off in honor of his birthday.

Peter is twenty years old and he’s happy. Truly, honestly happy.

And then, naturally — 

*

“Don’t even talk to me about Instagram, okay? You don’t know what I deal with,” Flash says, swiping his thumb over his phone screen. “Do you have any idea how boring gay influencers are? They’re always like, shirtless on mountains. Always.”

“You could just unfollow,” Ned says, shrugging.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Flash says. He presents them with an Instagram photo of two guys who are, indeed, shirtless on a mountain, like he’s proving a point.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to take away from this,” MJ says. She blinks at the screen. “Do they all look like that? With the teeth and the hair?”

Flash nods gravely. “Every single one. But if I don’t follow then they’ll never follow _ me _ and then I’m basically dead and all this work I’ve put into the Flash Mob will have been for nothing. Speaking of —” He shoves his phone into MJ’s reluctant hands. “I need a picture and you have the longest arms. Parker, last chance to put the suit on. _ Please_. Just for like, a minute.”

“It’s my birthday, dude,” Peter mumbles, squashing against Ned’s side for the photo. He really, really shouldn’t have told Flash, but they’d all made the mistake of thinking he’d chill after he came out.

Peter’s angling his face into frame when he spots him. Perfectly tailored pants, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, sunglasses dangling from his collar. He looks both out of place and completely at home as he chats with May. A small package is tucked under his arm.

Peter thinks about launching himself off the roof — he’d make the fall, he knows he’d make it, could stick to someone’s window before he even hit the ground — but Mr. Stark catches his eye before he can make a move.

“Peter!” May shouts, waving him over. “Peter, come say hi!”

“Oh my god,” Peter mutters.

“Oh my god,” Ned gasps.

“I’ll be right back,” Peter says, removing himself from the group before the line of questioning can begin.

May leaves them with a coy smile and a pointed _ I told you so _look in Peter’s direction. Mr. Stark smells like expensive cologne. Peter’s neck starts to sweat.

“I like the button.” Mr. Stark sniffs the Solo cup May had given him. “Your aunt makes a _ strong _lemonade — what is this, absinthe?”

“You didn’t have to come,” Peter blurts out.

“It’s funny,” Mr. Stark says, taking a thoughtful sip. “I forgot that page even existed — who uses Facebook anymore, right? — so you can thank Happy for me finding out about this. We have a whole social media team to make sure young people aren’t hurting my feelings on the internet but I think he likes to check for himself.” Mr. Stark pauses, glancing around. At the lights. At the happy birthday banner hung above the door. At Peter’s friends, who he acknowledges with a little wiggle of his fingers. “Pepper and Morgan send their love. How’re you, kid?”

“I’m okay,” Peter says, helpless.

“Good birthday? You’re twenty,” Mr. Stark says with careful certainty, like he’d specifically memorized it.

“I’m twenty,” Peter confirms. He rolls back on the balls of his feet. He wants to say something else but his mind blanks.

“Well, I’m just stopping by,” Mr. Stark says, suddenly brisk, all business. He hands him the box he’d come in with, professionally wrapped in shiny Hulk-printed paper. “Open that after I leave, alright? Get back to your friends. The one with the phone’s been ‘secretly’ filming me since I got here and this really isn’t my angle.” He gestures vaguely around his chin and starts to leave before seeming to think better of it, his hand clapping down on Peter’s shoulder. “Happy birthday, Pete. You deserve it.”

He watches Mr. Stark say something to May that makes her laugh, kiss her cheek, and then he’s gone, like he was never there at all. Peter looks down at the package, at all the little comic book-style action bubbles that surround the little comic book-style Hulk: _ Smash! Crash! Bang! _

“Dude,” Ned says, at his side in seconds. “I _ knew _ he’d get you a gift. I bet it’s sick.”

“Yeah,” Peter agrees, slow to catch up, operating on a delay. “I bet it is.”

*

He doesn’t open it until he’s home, peeling the paper back with care, almost afraid of tearing it until he realizes what he’s doing and laughs self-consciously. Under the mini Hulks is a red and gold box, within that sits a black bag with a handwritten note on top:

_ Your old one was so pathetic it was starting to embarrass me._

_—TS_

The camera is sleek and small and covered in a hundred different buttons. It comes to life with a soft whir when Peter picks it up. He grins, aiming the lens at a random corner of his apartment, panning around slowly, experimentally. He almost jumps out of his skin when he turns to the window and Deadpool’s frame fills up the screen, his back to Peter as he lounges on the fire escape, head bopping.

Peter sighs.

“What are you doing?” he says, leaning on the sill. Deadpool is listening to dubstep and has a Taco Bell bag in his lap.

“You told me not to come through your window anymore,” Deadpool says.

“I told you to use the door,” Peter says.

“Is _ that _what you said? I couldn’t remember.” And Peter doesn’t have a reason for stepping aside to let him in but he does anyway, and then there’s Deadpool in the middle of his living room, looking fully at home as always. “Good evening, birthday boy!”

“How —” He stops short when Deadpool taps the button, which is still clipped to his shirt. In Peter’s haste to pull it off he tears a hole in the fabric.

“How old are you now? Thirteen?” He deposits the bag of food on the coffee table and flops back on the couch. It’s only then that Peter notices one arm of his suit is ripped clean off. There’s a deep gash in his shoulder trickling a stream of blood as the skin steadily knits itself back together.

“I’m twenty and that joke’s never as funny as anyone thinks it is,” Peter says, putting a safe amount of space between them on the cushions. His camera is still cradled in one hand.

“What’d you do? Something illegal?” And Peter considers not answering, but Wade’s — _ Deadpool’s _ — voice sounds a little eager, a little hopeful. A little interested.

“My aunt threw me a party, my friends were there,” Peter catches himself saying. Somewhere between the fire escape and the window Deadpool shut his music off and now all Peter can hear is the city outside, the shuffling of feet upstairs, their breath. “Uh, Mr. Stark showed up.”

“I was wondering where this high-tech nerd shit came from,” Deadpool says, angling forward to inspect Peter’s gift. “The Tin Man hooked you up. You like cameras?”

“Do I like — I mean, I film stuff sometimes,” he says. “I made videos from the first time I went on an Avengers mission but Happy like, banned me from ever putting them anywhere.” He’s said too much, he’s sure of it, but Deadpool laughs. “Your arm’s okay, right?”

Deadpool twists around to inspect the wound like he’s noticing it for the first time. “Sure is, Webs. You know how this re-animated corpse of mine works.”

“I know,” Peter says, rubbing a hand over his eyes. He asks, knowing he won’t get a straight answer, “What happened?”

Deadpool doesn’t respond as he leans forward to rustle around in the bag, really making a show of it, and Peter sort of thinks that’s the end of the conversation before he says, “Well, I pulled a Spidey and saved a cat from a tree.”

Peter snorts. Of course. “You did not.”

“Hand to god, birthday boy, I really did.” He tugs the bottom of his mask up so he can bite into a soggy burrito. “Thing must’ve climbed out of the window or something, but this girl was _ losing _her shit, standing in the middle of the sidewalk, totally throwing off the flow of foot traffic, begging for it to come down. So I climb the tree, I grab the cat, and believe it or not, it wasn’t psyched about having a big red and black thing in its face, so it swiped at me. Long story short, I fell out of the tree. The cat landed on its feet; I did not.”

“I don’t save cats from trees _ that _ much,” Peter says, still mostly convinced the story is bullshit. He ignores Deadpool’s chewing as he messes with his camera settings. One button makes everything green; another makes it look like it’s raining. “It didn’t come with directions or anything.”

“That’s because it’s Grade-A fuckin’ Stark tech,” Deadpool says.

“No way, they don’t make cameras,” Peter says, zooming until he can see into the office building across the street. The picture stays perfectly clear.

Deadpool sighs. “You naive little dandelion. _ They _don’t, but Bruce Wayne lite sure can. You see a brand name on that thing? You think Canon can turn out that kind of functionality?”

Peter does not, but the realization hits him slowly. “Wow,” he says.

Deadpool hums his agreement. He’s not good at feigning nonchalance.

He could’ve kicked himself. Mr. Stark would never have said anything and Peter would never have noticed and it would’ve continued on like that forever and — shit. _ Shit_.

He looks to Deadpool, who’s biting into a taco, cheese and tomatoes falling out everywhere. Peter readjusts, lifts the camera, points it at him.

“If you’re going to use my likeness I’m going to have to sign some kind of release,” Deadpool says through his mouthful of food. “I haven’t even seen a script. Is Fox producing this one, too? I refuse to self-censor.”

“Just be cool,” Peter says, zooming in a little on the visible half of Wade’s face.

“This is not my good side, Peter Thomas Anderson. I left my good side back in 2016.”

Peter grins. “You’re doing great.”

Deadpool gives him the side-eye but quiets down, letting Peter turn him different colors, distort his image, switch up the lens settings. He’s a decent model, a good test dummy, and when he’s not doing his breathiest _ I’m ready for my close-up _ he sits still and watches Peter work.

“That’s going to win an Indie Spirit Award next year,” Deadpool says after Peter stops filming. He’s done eating but his mask stays bunched around his nose. Taco Bell wrappers lay forgotten on the floor. “You legally have to give me five before we go for take two. It’s in the SAG rules. Hey, I bet this isn’t what Stark wanted you to do with that thing when he made it for you.”

“It’s my camera, I can do what I want with it,” Peter says, shrugging.

That silences Deadpool, and it’s still weird to Peter that he has this kind of power. He’s heard the guy talk over Mr. Stark, challenge the Hulk to an arm wrestle, and flat-out laugh in Captain America’s face, but _ Peter _ can shut him up without even really trying. Sometimes all it takes is a look.

After a beat, Deadpool asks, “Why didn’t you tell me about your birthday?”

“What?” Peter frowns. “Why — what? I don’t know when your birthday is.”

“Birthdays don’t matter when you’ve literally seen death, but you’re young. Vibrant. Twenty! Not legal drinking age, can’t even rent a car, but it’s something.”

Peter doesn’t know what to say. He goes with: “I don’t really make a big deal out of my birthday. I didn’t invite… you know, like, superheroes or anything. I didn’t even really want Mr. Stark to show up.”

“He thinks I’m a superhero,” Deadpool breathes. “Why no Stark? Are you allergic to expensive, bespoke presents?”

“Don’t do that, it’s just because — _ because_.” Peter huffs an irritated breath. He scratches a hand through his hair. “I’m really grateful for Mr. Stark, okay? I seriously am. I’m… lucky, but sometimes I just want a day to feel like a normal person. Sometimes I miss it.” He squeezes his eyes shut, the shame settling in. “And now I sound like a dick.”

“You’re so far from ever being a dick,” Deadpool says, his voice pitched low and warm. It sends goosebumps up Peter’s arms, makes his blood burn. “You’re the least dickish person I’ve ever met, and I’ve met a lot of dicks. _ So _ many fuckin’ dicks. Dicks of truly frightening length and girth.”

Peter laughs roughly, something seizing in his chest. He looks at Deadpool, at the white mesh covering his eyes, the strong line of his jaw, his chapped lips. He can’t take it. Twenty years old and already at his breaking point — maybe he should find a hobby. He used to have so many hobbies.

Peter swallows. His face is on fire, he can feel it. “Can you take your mask off?”

Deadpool doesn’t move, his mouth falling open like he wants to say something but for once seems to be at a loss for words.

“Wade,” Peter tries.

“Look.” Deadpool pauses, inhales shakily. “I know I’m not the arbiter of good ideas, but I think that would be a bad one.”

“You didn’t get me a birthday gift,” Peter tries, heart in his throat.

“Well, that’s just not fair.” But after another few seconds the mask comes off and there’s Wade, open and a little anxious, eyes roving over Peter’s face.

“I —” Peter starts to say but doesn’t know where he’s going with it. He sets the camera on the table.

“Peter,” Wade says, like a warning.

He can’t remember the last time Wade, or Deadpool, called him by his real name.

Minutes, hours, maybe a few days pass before Peter moves. He shifts closer until he brushes Wade’s arm, his wound fully healed. He has no idea what the fuck he’s doing and Wade, sitting rigidly still, isn’t helping him out.

“It’s not a good idea,” Wade reiterates.

“I haven’t even done anything,” Peter says.

“I know that look,” Wade says, voice like gravel. “In my experience, it’s never a good idea.”

_ Then why are you here? _ Peter wants to ask. _ Why do you keep coming back? _He doesn’t say it, can’t bring himself to say anything, just holds Wade’s gaze and listens to their shallow breathing. No one does anything, and then all at once, inevitably, they’re kissing. Peter thinks he started it, but he can’t be sure.

It’s a chaste press of lips at first, completely innocent, until Peter opens up wider, goes deeper, pushes his tongue against Wade’s. Wade sighs into his mouth and doesn’t touch him, which is a problem, so Peter swings a leg over his thigh and seats himself in his lap, heart rate kicking into overdrive at the brazenness of whatever he thinks he’s doing. With a murmured _ oh, fuck_, Wade’s hands settle cautiously on his hips, and when Peter feels his own start to shake he rests them on the back of Wade’s neck. He tilts his head and Wade secures his hold around him, like he can’t help it, their chests pressing together. He wonders if Wade can feel his heartbeat thundering against his ribcage, if he can tell how nervous he is. He wonders if Wade’s nervous, too.

Wade nips at his bottom lip and Peter palms his cheekbone, trails his fingers over Wade’s skin: his head, his ears, his face, his shoulders, his bare arm. He feels the odd smoothness in some places and the uneven bumpiness in others. He can’t stop touching, even when Wade tries to recoil — 

(“What?” Peter choked, pulling back when Wade jerked under his fingers. “Did that hurt?”

“No, _ no,_ none of it hurts, just —” And he’d looked at Peter in disbelief before pressing their lips together again.)

— so he takes the hints and remembers where his hands aren’t wanted but files away the places they are. It’s awful and incredible and Peter can feel himself getting hard already, body reacting before his brain, the most humiliating thing that could ever _ possibly _ happen, but Wade just pulls him closer, lowering his hands to rest on Peter’s ass, which has his mouth faltering.

“_Wolverine’s ghost, _it’s even better than I imagined,” Wade says, breaking their kiss with a gasp. He rests his forehead against Peter’s, eyes closed. He gives a test squeeze, then another.

“What’s wrong with you,” Peter says, shaky, destroyed.

“Why am I talking?” Wade asks.

“Why are you? I don’t know,” Peter agrees, kissing him again.

They sink into each other, sloppy and searching and eager. He kisses the hinge of Wade’s jaw, the jut of his chin. Wade’s teeth graze over the spot behind his ear, and then they meet right back in the middle, unable to stop chasing each other’s mouths. He loses track of time on that couch, in Wade’s mouth, under his hands, and doesn’t know how long they sit there but thinks desperately that he could go a lot longer if Wade will let him.

Then Wade’s hands slide under Peter’s thighs and suddenly he’s in the air, letting out a loud, surprised _ what the hell _ at the shock of it. He scrambles to wrap his legs around Wade’s waist, the abrupt shift in gravity, the reversal of their usual position — Wade strapped to Peter’s back, Peter navigating the city — dragging a surprised laugh out of him. 

“Sorry,” Wade says, panicked. “I thought it’d be sexy. No dice?”

“I mean, warn me first,” Peter says, catching his breath, still laughing. “I almost kicked you in the balls. Impulse.”

“Probably would’ve deserved it. Warn you first, yeah,” Wade agrees dreamily, and walks them further into the apartment. Toward his bedroom, Peter realizes belatedly. “You good?”

Peter’s breathing hard. He nods, stupid and overwhelmed, and touches Wade’s bicep. “I’m good. You good?”

Wade’s throat ticks. “No complaints from me.”

Wade deposits him on the bed and climbs over him, expression caught somewhere between a smile and a frown. His thumb strokes at the spot just under his eye, and Peter’s heart stutters.

“Gonna blow your fucking mind, baby boy,” Wade promises, sitting up so he can get out of his suit, his arms flailing when he briefly gets stuck in the leather. Peter lets him struggle for a few seconds before he takes pity and leans up to help with his zipper. “Gonna make you web all over the place.”

Peter groans, slapping a hand over his face. “Dude. I dare you to think for five seconds before you speak.”

Wade kicks his suit into a pile, forgotten somewhere on the floor, and fits himself above Peter, arms bracketing him in. Peter squirms under his gaze, thrilled and uncomfortable.

“Holy shit,” Wade says, reverent. He’s down to just a pair of pineapple-printed boxers and Peter can’t stop looking at him, at his chest, his shoulders, his neck. Wade catches him and smiles, the corners of his eyes crinkling with it. They kiss as Wade’s knee presses between his legs, and what, is Peter supposed to argue with that?

*

“Is this okay?”

“Yeah, yes, it’s — good, really good.”

“...this is okay, right?”

“It’s okay, Wade.”

“...you’re sure this is okay?”

“I’m going to kill you.”

“Gotcha. Loud and clear.”

*

“That wasn’t your first time, was it?”

“_Wade_.”

*

Peter is being jostled.

The room is dark and his eyes are unfocused and his limbs are tangled with Wade’s, which is part of why he’s awake: Wade’s trying to free his arm from where it’s trapped under Peter.

He’s drowning in about eight gallons of sweat and the covers have been kicked to the foot of the bed. He’s going to have to change his sheets tomorrow, or later, when it’s brighter. The room is too warm, the air thick. Wade has one foot out of bed. They’re both very naked.

“Where’re you goin’?” Peter mumbles, blinking hard against the streetlight streaming in through the blinds.

Wade freezes. “Oh, hey. Hi, sorry.”

“Hi. Where are you going?”

“I was just going to put the air on,” Wade whispers, like they’re not both already up. “You sweat a lot, you know that? I mean, I love it. It’s great. What was I talking about? My arm’s asleep.”

Peter readjusts and Wade pulls his arm out, flexing his fist with a sigh of relief. When he starts to move Peter grabs for him, using what minimal amount of strength he can muster to tug him back. Somehow, Wade goes down easy.

“Don’t go anywhere,” Peter says, leaning forward to stifle his yawn against Wade’s chest. “Or I’ll web your legs together.”

“You’ve done it before,” Wade says, quiet and fond and familiar. He strokes a hand down Peter’s back.

Peter is so tired, the heat and the hour weighing on him, that all he can do is tilt his face up and press his mouth sleepily against Wade’s. The laugh Wade lets out is as soft as his voice had been a moment ago, a puff of air against Peter’s cheek. He falls asleep like that, with Wade kissing him back.

*

He knows Wade is gone before he opens his eyes. Senses it as his body starts to wake up, the Wade-specific tingle nowhere to be found.

The room is comfortably chilly, the window unit on full blast. At some point, the covers had been pulled up around Peter’s shoulders. He lurches out of bed and steps inelegantly into a pair of boxers, shoving his hands through his hair. In the living room he finds the floor clear of Taco Bell wrappers and his shelf still mounted on the wall.

“Well,” he says to his empty apartment, “Cool. That’s cool.”

He eats breakfast. He calls May. He does the dishes. He folds his laundry. He takes a long shower and winces when he scrubs over a mouth-shaped bruise on his collarbone that hasn’t healed yet — 

(“How long’ll that stick around?” Wade said, his tongue darting out to trail appreciatively over his handiwork. “Before your spider-powers ruin everything.”

Peter’s breath hitched. “Fifteen minutes, tops.”

Wade grinned, a little crazed. “Well, this is gonna be the best fifteen minutes of my life.”)

— _ Jesus_. Has he always been so embarrassing, or is it a new development? A side effect to being in his twenties, maybe?

His body is sore and worn out in a way he’s not used to and his only plans for the day involve becoming one with his couch. When he goes to claim his spot, he notices the camera, still on the coffee table where he’d left it the night before.

“Why are you like this,” he mutters, shaking his head. “You idiot.”

He’s halfway through his third episode of _ Dog Cops _ when the sight of it in his periphery gets to be too much and he lunges forward to grab the thing, scrolling quickly through the handful of videos he’d captured until he finds it.

He plays it on a loop until the camera’s battery dies: Wade flipping Peter his middle finger. Wade licking sour cream off his thumb. Wade pretending to faint. Wade laughing, the top half of his face obscured. It’s six whole minutes of nothing and he can’t look away.

“You _ idiot_,” he reminds himself. “You. Idiot.”

*

Flash lives in a brownstone on the Upper East Side. He has three bathrooms and no roommates and his parents pay his rent and he hates it, so Peter comes over a lot. It’s a win-win: Flash also has central air.

They spend an entire day on Flash’s couch, hiding out from the dense humidity the end of August has brought with it. They get a little stoned on Flash’s expensive stuff — something Peter does so infrequently he almost coughs up a lung on his first exhale, which Flash finds hysterical — and watch _ Planet Earth _until the sun goes down. In three days, he’ll be back at school. Knowing that fills him with a weird mix of distaste and excitement.

“It’s because you think you’re smarter than everyone,” Flash says when he voices the thought.

Peter furrows his brow. “I don’t think I’m smarter than everyone.”

Flash, distracted as he flips through dog adoption Instagram accounts, shrugs. “You definitely do. You’ve always been like that.”

Peter’s mouth opens and shuts a few times, incredulous, brain too foggy to think of a reply. “No,” he says dumbly.

“Yeah, you do this thing where you always have to be the smartest person in the room and then you try to act like you’re not.” Flash smiles, delighted by himself. “Damn, I’m really introspective when I’m high.”

“Everyone thinks they’re introspective when they’re high,” Peter says, and then off Flash’s look, “Sorry.”

“You literally just did it,” Flash says, flat.

“Okay! Okay, okay, okay, okay, I get it, I hear it.”

They turn their attention back to the TV and Peter tongues at a raw spot on his lip from where he’d bitten down too hard in his sleep. He’d woken up that morning to the taste of blood, to a slight but sharp pain making his mouth sting, to the deep indents of his own teeth tattooing themselves in his skin. He feels crazy.

He hasn’t heard from Wade, not that he’d expected to. Wade drops in and out, Wade operates on his own schedule, in his own universe, and if Wade is in the mood to save the world, to be your friend, he’ll show up, and if he’s not, well, good luck. These are the things Peter knows and he still hadn’t been able to stop himself from casually, _ so casually_, asking Clint if he’d seen Deadpool around lately, to which Clint responded with a raised eyebrow and a _ you’d probably know before me_. Peter nodded, a quick movement, and said something nonsensical like _ no, definitely, yeah_.

So Wade’s gone and that’s normal and the mistake had been Peter’s and, also, if there were ever a time to become a little less obsessed with a person he barely knows, now is probably that time. And maybe there’s still a childish bit of him that does think he’s smarter, better, but if anyone could’ve ruined whatever remained of that it was most certainly Wade Wilson.

At some point Flash offers up his guest room in that half-sarcastic way he tends to express sincerity. _ You can stay if you want, you don’t have to, _he says, and Peter knocks his knuckles against his shoulder, nods.

(They’d tried once, years ago, right before graduation. At the beginning of their burgeoning friendship, at the end of the awkward, once-exciting thing Peter and MJ had tried to figure out. In Flash’s parents’ basement, a little drunk and tucked away from the rest of the party, Peter quietly confessed _ I think she’s gonna dump me, man _ and then Flash had kissed him, graceless and curious, each trying to get a feel for the other until it became deeply, deeply clear something wasn’t working. “_That’s _ what I’ve been waiting for? Seriously?” Flash whispered, face scrunching in distaste, making Peter laugh so hard he snorted.)

Trudging slowly up the stairs, Peter feels the thought bubble back up in him, needling at him, forcing him to get it out: “I don’t think I’m smarter than everyone. Not anymore, at least. I’m pretty dumb.”

Flash rolls his eyes. “You’re not dumb, you’re Tony Stark’s prodigy.”

“But I’m dumb about, like.” Peter pauses on the word. “You know. Life. Life stuff.”

“Oh my god,” Flash says on a heavy groan. “Dude, it’s not a bad thing, alright? Don’t take it personally.”

“I don’t know everything,” Peter says, almost pleadingly.  
  
Flash stops walking. He rubs his hands over his face. “Fine! Fine, you’re dumb as shit, I’m way smarter than you. I make you look like a total idiot every day of your life.”

After a long beat, Peter laughs. Flash laughs, too, and for that brief moment in time he feels lighter. For that brief moment in time, it’s enough.

*

He wakes up in the middle of the night, convinced Wade is at the foot of the bed.

The silence of the room is stifling and his heart won’t settle so he sits on Flash’s front stoop, watching the occasional cab drive by, the bleary-eyed dog owners out for a late walk. The neighborhood is so much quieter than Peter’s own, all its residents having gone to bed at the same time, like an unspoken curfew that only spans a few city blocks.

Half of him, the half that has spent the past handful of months becoming steadily consumed by the presence of another person, gets lost in his own fragmented thoughts — _ why did I, why did he, I can’t believe I_. The other half is distracted by every quiet sound or movement, hoping every time it would be Wade revealing himself. It never is.

He goes back to bed as the sun starts to rise, the hum of the air conditioning lulling him into a dreamless sleep.

*

On Labor Day, aliens attack Manhattan.

He’s at Ned’s parents’ barbecue when he senses it and mournfully abandons his hot dog to swan dive off the roof. (Minutes later, his phone vibrates with a text from Ned:_ I told my mom you got diarrhea lmaoooo sorry I panicked_.) He’s halfway there when the Avengers alerts start going off, and by the time he arrives Cap is clearing out civilians while Thor gleefully shoots lightning out of his good eye.

“Holy _ shit_,” Peter says, touching down on a flipped-over car.

Cap shakes his head. “He’s showing off. Think you can handle the one trying to tear down the… what’s that billboard for?”

Peter squints. “Boxed water. Give me a boost?”

“Might be better off without people knowing about that,” Cap says, crouching down with his shield at the ready all the same.

As usual, the clean-up is more daunting than the fight and Mr. Stark sends him home after only an hour with a firm _ you’re done, Pete_, despite his half-hearted protests. His first class of the semester is in about six hours and the only thing he can think about is the fact that he’s out of toilet paper. He was supposed to stop at the grocery store on the way home from Ned’s. He’d had a whole night planned.

Andre laughs when Peter walks into the bodega, greeting him with a jovial _ hey, Spider-Man! _ and holding his palm out for a high-five. Peter gets what he came for, as well as batteries, a bag of Doritos, a gallon of orange juice, and coffee. Andre refuses to take Peter’s money so he stuffs a few bills into the change jar and hurries out before he can be scolded.

He’s humming a song he’d heard on the radio the other day — _ left in the dust something something sunflower _ — and is distracted enough from juggling his bags that he doesn’t realize he’s being followed until he’s a few blocks from his apartment. He groans, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk.

“Dude, it’s like four in the morning,” Peter says, not missing the whine in his voice. He puts his purchases to the side, hoping they don’t get destroyed in the inevitable fray. “Can we try this kidnapping thing again after I’ve slept? Let’s reschedule for Friday, maybe Saturday, I’m wide open.”

“_What _the hell time is it? Has someone been fucking with my watch again? It was funny the first time and less funny the second time when I completely missed the _Seinfeld _finale. You never get a cultural moment like that back, you know?”

Peter’s heart just about falls out of his ass. His senses, delayed, spike all at once, a belated warning.

Wade’s messing with his _ Adventure Time _ watch, slapping it lightly until he sighs, shakes his head. “Alright, that one’s on me, the battery’s been dead since like, 2010. At this point, it’s just decorative, what I really need is a —” 

“Why are you _ following _me?” Peter cuts him off, clenching his hands into fists in effort to stop the shaking.

“I’m not following you, I always walk this way. Wait, do you live around here, too? Have you _ always _ lived around here?”

“Okay,” Peter says, willing his every nerve to stop vibrating. He feels an overwhelming urge to web Wade to the side of a building and leave him there, and he’s almost positive Wade would let him. In the least graceful exit of all time, he scoops up his bags, his toilet paper, and nods definitively as he turns away. “Okay, cool, goodnight.”

“Fucking — Peter, hold on.” A big hand on his shoulder stops him. “How’ve you been?”

“It’s _ four in the morning_,” Peter says, a plea, an attempt to reason with the unreasonable. He shrugs out of Wade’s grasp and faces him, glad they both have their masks on, glad Wade can’t really see him. “I just fought like, a lot of aliens and I have a class called ‘Shakespeare in Film’ at nine.” At Wade’s pointed silence he hastily adds, “It fills a requirement. Can you go? Seriously, I just — you need to go, man.”

Wade sounds a little strained when he asks, “Can I at least walk you home?”

Peter breathes out of his nose, closing his eyes briefly. “Yeah. Do you want to… carry my toilet paper?”

“Yes,” Wade says immediately, bundling the package against his chest. It’s a short walk to Peter’s building and neither of them bother with small talk. At one point their shoulders brush and something electric passes through him. Peter is King Moron.

“So. I gotta go to bed,” Peter says, looking up to the sky in embarrassment.

Wade hesitates, shifting his weight from foot to foot, glancing at the front door like he’s expecting, or hoping, something will jump out of it. “Do you want me to bring this up? Could be heavy. Five flights.”

“It’s toilet paper,” Peter says despairingly.

They’ve been doing this push and pull or flirtation or friendship for what feels like forever and, yes, Peter had been the one to take the final plunge, ignoring Wade’s warnings because he’d thought — whatever. He screwed up, it didn’t matter how many angles he looked at it from (and he’d tried many, many different ones), but if Wade had never liked him, had never _ wanted _ him, if Peter had been wrong the whole time and Wade had just let them both give into something that could’ve been avoided — that sucked. To put it lightly, it sucked, it _ sucks_, and it’ll continue to suck unless Peter makes a move, does something about it. Grows up.

“I gotta go to bed,” he says again, firm, and webs his dumbass toilet paper back, letting it hang from his wrist. “Night, Wade.”

“Peter,” Wade says, quieter now.

“I can’t,” Peter says, fumbling with the spare key he keeps in a pocket on his suit. It’s four in the morning and he’s still in his fucking suit. “I can’t — oh my god, I really, really can’t. This is like, the biggest, weirdest mess of my life, man. And I just need it to stop.” He means to shut up but his mouth barrels on without his brain’s consent, unable to quit now that it’s begun, “You could’ve just told me you weren’t into me. You didn’t have to do the whole pity sex thing. Because I’m not into… the other option. The whole meaningless — whatever, it’s not how I roll.”

Wade makes a sound like he’s been hurt, broken in the middle. “That’s not what it was. That’s not what it is, I’m — fuck, I’m _ sorry_.”

“It’s okay,” Peter lies. He shoves his key in the lock, jiggles the knob until the door unsticks, thankful for a routine he understands, even a small one. He looks back exactly once. “Seriously, it’s cool. I’m going home, you should go home, and, you know, I’ll see you around. We’ll save the world and stuff.”

He doesn’t wait around to hear Wade’s response.

*

Days pass. Weeks. Peter copes. Peter carries on.

“You okay, dude?” Ned asks.

_ All good, man. _

“You okay, sweets?” May asks.

_ Yeah, ‘course, are _ you _ okay? _

“You okay, dummy?” MJ asks.

_ Everything’s cool, wanna get pizza? _

“You okay, kid?” Mr. Stark asks.

“I’m _ fine_,” Peter finally says, loud and harsh enough to startle a few of Mr. Stark’s robots into wake-up mode.

Mr. Stark jerks his head back a fraction, an eyebrow quirking. He holds up his hands in mocking surrender. “Whoa, what’d I say? Did I hit a nerve? Varsity blues got you down?”

Peter can barely speak, his mind and his mouth unwilling or unable to meet halfway. He leans heavily against a table, arms folding over his chest, shaking his head minutely.

“What’s wrong?” Mr. Stark asks, immediate and furious, his voice tight. “Are you in trouble?”

Peter’s eyes widen. “No, no — chill, no, I swear. Not the life or death kind.”

Mr. Stark deflates a bit. “Just the regular old fuck up your life kind?”

Peter nods, thinking it’s all he can manage, before: “I messed up. I can’t talk about it, but it happened, and I don’t know what to do about it.”

Jaw working, Mr. Stark looks from him to the screen of his tablet to the model of the Spider-Man suit projected in front of him, then back to Peter. “God, I am never letting Morgan age past twelve,” he says, surprising a laugh out of Peter. “Is this what she has to look forward to? The life of the modern youth? Pass.” Before either of them can shake it off, Mr. Stark’s gaze softens. “Well, I’m sorry you’re going through something, whatever it is. I’m sorry I can’t help.”

Peter smiles, sad. “You can’t fix everything for me.”

“But why _ not_?” Mr. Stark makes a sound like a laugh and a cough, dropping his head to his hands. His pinches the bridge of his nose. “When I was twenty — I mean, Jesus. How long do you have? I was a disaster. You’re the exact opposite of me in all the ways that, you know, matter. All the good without the bad.”

Peter falters, lost for words.

Clearing his throat, Mr. Stark leans an elbow on the table, nodding to the suit. “So, anyway, do you want to help me with this upgrade or not?”

Peter perks up, practically tripping over his own feet in his hurry to get to Mr. Stark’s workstation. “Yeah, yes, whoa, really? Yes! Are you —” 

“I’m not giving you heat vision.”

*

Summer sticks around well into September and when the temperature finally starts to drop the heat drags its feet, like it’s not ready to go. (“I’ve been reading about climate change,” White Wolf grumbles to Peter after an Avengers meeting, apropos of nothing.) He keeps the windows in his apartment open overnight and spends an afternoon digging his sweaters out of May’s storage closet.

Peter’s not an excellent student, has never had the focus to be one, but CUNY’s engineering lab makes going to school worth it. In between classes, he and Ned spend most of their time poking at the computers and the tools, the space full of the kind of technology they’d spent the pre-Spider-Man years only dreaming about. They spend the fall taking apart an old car battery, politely ignoring their professor’s safety warnings.

“You think we could 3D print your suit and then I could be, you know, like your understudy?”

“Feels like we shouldn’t test that idea out,” Peter says, hunched over a mess of wires he’s trying to untangle before he feels it. The tingle starts at the base of his neck like it always does, a dizzying buzz, like getting off a rollercoaster. He sits up straight and looks at Ned, who smiles eagerly.

“Is it aliens?”

“Don’t think so,” Peter says, unzipping his jacket as he climbs to his feet. “Can I leave my backpack with you?”

“Obviously.” Ned sighs. “Man. I love when it’s aliens.”

*

It’s not aliens.

A bunch of dudes with assault weapons are holding up a Bloomingdale’s, and Peter and Black Widow are the first ones to respond. It’s a straight-forward enough situation that they tell the rest of the team to hold off on making the journey downtown.

He moves a few lingering civilians out of the line of fire and knocks the guy wielding the biggest gun unconscious with a particularly powerful swing-kick. It’s all normal, standard bullshit until it’s not, until Peter notices what looks like a glowing, metal blaster attached to one of the guy’s hands and has all of five seconds to react, five seconds to get Black Widow’s attention with an _ uh, hey _before a bright blue light comes shooting straight at him.

The pain that blooms across his chest is instantaneous, and the pain in his side that follows — a different kind, like being thrown into a wall — just about knocks him out cold. He fades in and out, can feel his body being dragged, doesn’t have the strength to protest. There’s shouting, a flash of red, the unmistakable _ whoosh _ of katanas being drawn, and then it all fades away, unconsciousness enveloping him all at once.

*

This looks bad.

It must.

It occurs to him as he’s lifted into the air, how bad it probably looks. He hears panicked muttering above him but he can’t make any of the words out. The groan he lets out _ hurts _ and Peter lets his head fall back against something sturdy, something warm.

*

Arguing. Hushed, agitated arguing. Several different voices. That’s as much as he can register.

“He can’t die, can he? That’s not possible, right?”

“No, that’s just me, he_ can_ die, he can absolutely fucking die, and he _will_ if we don’t _do something_, and it’ll be _my_ _fucking fault_.”

“Wow, if only there was a place that specifically treated the sick and injured, right?”

“_This was closer_.”

“My couch is not a hospital bed.”

“No, it’s not, and we’re going to have to get him to a hospital soon. There are going to be people looking for him. You dumb cunt.”

“It’s so weird having an Avenger around. Like when you see a Dunkin’ across the street from a Starbucks.”

“If he dies, can I have his web shooters?”

“Russell, go wait in the car.”

*

He’s alive.

He figures it out in bursts: the sweat pooled at the small of his back, the weight of the blanket on top of him, the pillow under his head. His mask is off but he can feel the fabric of his suit clinging to him. His chest feels like an ever-expanding bruise, an ache that grows with every breath.

His eyes open and the light, dim as it is, stings. His lips are cracked and raw. He has no idea where he is, but a distant, fuzzy prickle tells him who’s close.

Wade’s asleep, tucked in a corner of the couch where Peter had, at some point, been laid out. He’s in a tropical-printed shirt and his head has fallen to one side.

He tries to take stock of where they are — a living room, it looks like. Warm, a little dated, minimal decor. With an arm around his chest and his teeth clenched, Peter pushes himself up, his ribs crying out in protest of the movement.

“Ow, ow, ow, yep, mistake, bad idea, mistake,” he agrees, sinking back into the cushions and trying to think back to what Mr. Stark had told him to do if he ever woke up in a strange place. _ Call me, call Happy, _ don’t _ call Cap, he’ll lose his shit _is the only part he can remember, but when he puts his hand to the usual spot on his hip where he keeps his phone he feels nothing there.

“Holy fuck, you’re alive.” He dares a glance up and finds Wade staring at him, looking a little winded. “Hi, _ Jesus_, hi. Are you okay?”

“Nope,” Peter responds, and then he’s teetering over again, headfirst into Wade’s lap. He wiggles around, trying to readjust until Wade stops him with a hand on his wrist. “Sorry.”

“Nothin’ to apologize for, Webs,” Wade says, and as Peter drifts back under he swears he feels calloused fingers carding through his hair.

*

The glowing, metal blasters had been spawned from some remaining piece of the Chitauri tech Adrian Toomes had tried to harness, some underground movement of people unhappy with the system and had taken it upon themselves to fix it — starting with superheroes, who they believed to be the biggest problem. The shooting at Bloomingdale’s had been a diversion, a way of luring whatever heroes they could get there, of catching them off-guard. It worked.

Seconds after Peter had been shot, Black Widow pulled him behind a counter for cover and called for back-up. Wade, not on the call but aware of danger in the area, arrived first, just in time to shield her from a blast and, in a moment of panic, scoop Peter into his arms and book it to the first place he thought of.

The house belonged to Al, a very unimpressed blind lady who only grunted when Wade informed her, in overjoyed relief, that Peter wasn’t dead. According to Wade only about twelve hours had passed, which he’d explained after waking Peter up with a bowl of soup and a handful of painkillers. His — friends? Teammates? Caretakers? — arrived soon after, the group of them huge and loud and immediately unhappy with Wade.

“I told him to take you to a hospital,” grumbles the frowning man who’d been introduced to Peter as Cable. (Which: _ what? _)

“And I told _ you_, Time Traveler’s Wife, that I don’t know if we can even trust the hospital,” Wade shoots back. 

“Which still sounds a little paranoid to me,” says Weasel.

“I tried to wrap your ribs, how do they feel?” Domino (Wade’s friends only used their made-up names, apparently) asks, addressing Peter.

“Uh, bad,” Peter says, wincing as he leans over to leave his empty dish on the side table. Sweat beads at his hairline with the effort. “No hospitals, I just really need to call my aunt. I need to call Mr. Stark, I need to… get home.”

“I agree,” Cable says, narrowing his eyes at Wade. “Before Dick for Brains gets charged with child endangerment.”

“I’m twenty,” Peter says at the same time Wade says, “He’s _ twenty_.”

“Wow,” Domino says, under her breath.

In the back of the cab Peter stretches out, his vision swimming as he breathes through the soreness while Wade rides shotgun, chattering in a nervous, familiar way.

“You’re sure we shouldn’t take him to the hospital, DP?” Dopinder asks. The way he keeps glancing away from the road to check on Peter isn’t exactly reassuring.

“_I _ don’t want to go to the hospital,” Peter grinds out, wincing as they drive over a bump. The last time he’d tried that he’d been poked at for twenty minutes, the doctors and nurses unable to believe they were witnessing _ the _Spider-Man bleed out on their gurney, and he’d discharged himself after the fourth overzealous request to remove his mask. The visit had cost $500.

“He doesn’t want to go to the hospital,” Wade repeats. “And, personally, I think that’s for the best. You don’t know how deep this thing goes.”

“I don’t think doctors are trying to kill me, I just don’t want to go,” Peter says.

“Please don’t die in the back of my cab, Spider-Man,” Dopinder says.

*

Wade helps him up the stairs with a steady arm around his waist. They’re forced to stop at least ten separate times so Peter can catch his breath, blink through the pulsing, all-consuming _ hurt_. In his apartment, they re-wrap his ribs (Peter can’t think about the dark, mottling bruise the blast left in the center of his chest, or the way Wade fixes on it) and Wade gives him privacy while he changes into the first t-shirt he can find — _ the physics is theoretical but the fun is real_, it reads.

He leaves his torn, bloody, ash-dirty suit in the corner and puts his phone (which Wade had produced from his pocket, a little sheepish, in the car) on the charger as he reclines in bed. Wade returns with a glass of water and more painkillers, and he sits quietly nearby while Peter talks to May, to Mr. Stark, to Ned. _ I’m okay_, he swears after apologizing profusely for worrying them. _ Yes_, he’s taking medicine. _ Yes_, he’s healing well. _ No_, it’s late, don’t come over now. _ Yes_, someone is staying with him. _ Yes, yes, yes_.

By the time he finally hangs up he’s tired all over again and Wade is smiling faintly. Peter nudges him with his foot, not in the mood to dance around anything.

“You have a lot of people who love you,” Wade says, and the casual sincerity of it would’ve been enough to knock Peter over had he been standing. He doesn’t know what to say when Wade says things like that, when he says something and there’s no joke or barbed pop culture reference to follow. “Need anything else?”

“I’m okay,” Peter says, his eyes drooping as the numbing effects of the pills starting to do their magic. Wade lets him use his arm as leverage to rearrange himself into a slightly more comfortable position, and despite having to hold his breath the whole time it’s easier with the drugs running through him. Before he can go, Peter grabs his hand. “You’re not leaving, are you?”

“I’ll be on the couch,” Wade says. Those same rough fingers slide through Peter’s hair, moving it out of his face. “Yell if you need me, alright? I left my sexy nurse outfit at home, but —” 

“Can you just stay in here,” Peter croaks, not a question.

“Yeah,” Wade says without hesitation, and that’s how Peter falls asleep: his back to Wade’s chest, Wade’s hand resting on his thigh, the soft rise and fall of their breathing in sync.

*

May and Mr. Stark arrive at the same time, hurrying in with the same level of intensity and the same amount of questions. After a decent amount of scolding that Peter doesn’t have the stamina to fend off, they both wrap him in warm hugs, mindful of his injuries, then Mr. Stark insists on calling his doctor to come check Peter out — 

(“Your doctor makes house calls?” May asks, incredulous.

“Of course,” Mr. Stark says. “What would be the point of being me if she didn’t?”)

— only for her to tell them more or less what they’d all expected. Three cracked ribs, some internal and external bruising, all of which will heal at an accelerated rate thanks to Peter’s condition. Take the right medication, take a few weeks off from Spider-Man-ing, get plenty of rest, and he’ll be fine.

“Told you,” Peter says, smiling, which sets them off all over again with a chorus of _ it could’ve been a lot worse_-es and _ you could’ve had internal bleeding_-s. Their shared concern is among the most calming things he can think of.

May walks him to the shower while Mr. Stark arranges for his medicine and groceries to be delivered. They both offer to stay longer, only taking no for an answer after Peter tells them (for the fifth time) he’s just going to sleep, really.

And he does, mostly. The pills keep him zonked out for most of the day (not quite enough to make him forget he’d woken up without Wade behind him, but enough to keep it at the back of his mind) until Ned and MJ let themselves in later in the afternoon. He sits up in bed and they eat burgers while he tells them what he remembers of the blast, glossing over Wade’s involvement with a cursory _ uh, Deadpool, I think, I dunno _when MJ asks who got him out.

They make it through three episodes of _ The Office _ on Peter’s laptop before the medication has him nodding off on Ned’s shoulder. They clear his bed of the discarded wrappers and promise they’ll be back tomorrow. The memory of Wade’s voice cuts through his hazy cloud of a mind, gentle as it tells him, _ you have a lot of people who love you_.

The next time he comes to his room is empty but there’s movement outside the door, a light on in the hall. He blinks groggily and wonders vaguely what he’ll do if it’s an intruder.

“Just lay here, prob’ly,” he mumbles around a yawn, and then the door opens, the sight of Wade’s broad, silhouetted frame relaxing him. “Hey.”

“Jesus!” Wade yelps, holding a hand to his chest. “I could have a heart condition. You never know. Why are you up?”

“How’d you get in?” Peter asks, and then answers his own question: “Window, gotcha.”

“Sorry, I just —”

“You left this morning,” Peter continues, his lack of energy making him bolder. Wade’s still standing in the doorway, and Peter wants to reach for him but he has no control over his bodily functions. “I thought you were gonna stay.”

“Well, the city’s down a spider so the rest of us are picking up the slack, you know? Crime doesn’t sleep and neither do I. Now, that’d look great on a t-shirt.”

“Wade,” Peter says, an exhausted request. His voice sounds wrecked.

“I thought you’d want me gone when your entourage got here,” Wade says, or blurts, his words tumbling over each other like he was being held at gunpoint.

“I wanted you here,” Peter says, inhibitions gone and replaced with an honesty he’s not used to expressing in front of Wade. A near-death experience will do that to a person, he’s finding. “Can you, uh, _ come _ here?”

A sigh, a pause, and then the bed dips beside him, giving under Wade’s weight. Some time passes, Peter has no concept of how much. He might drift in and out of sleep, he might moan in groggy discomfort as he shifts around, but every time he stirs Wade’s there. Sitting up, lying on his side or his stomach or his back, feet kicked against the wall behind the bed. In the early hours of the morning, when the sun is just starting to break through, Peter decides he wants to get up to use the bathroom. He makes it all of two steps before calling helplessly for Wade, who comes to his rescue in a second. Together they make it there and back to bed — Wade turns around while he pisses, which is almost hilarious — and Peter squirms unhappily, his muscles starting to cramp from lying in the same position for so long, until Wade pulls him back against his chest.

“Your friends are cool,” Peter says, his eyes blinking lazy and heavy. He’d meant to say it earlier, had meant to tell Wade to thank them for him. “They’re nice.”

“Aw, listen to you. You’re on so many drugs you’re talking crazy.”

“Sure am,” Peter yawns. “Is Cable his real name?”

“The last time I asked him a personal question he put a knife in my dick,” Wade says, pleasant enough. “Great guy.” He slots a leg between Peter’s own, easy and unhurried. “I’m sorry I left,” he says, speaking his apology in Peter’s hair. “Both times. I shouldn’t have done that. And I didn’t do it because I don’t want to be around you.”

Peter bites the inside of his cheek. “Why did you?”

“There’s no way to say this without sounding like Brooding Superhero of the Month, but.” He feels Wade’s breath on the crown of his head, soothing him as he gathers himself. “Look, I’m not great about the whole people getting close to me thing. I have a pretty fucked up track record, and I never wanted to… go through it again. With anyone. And then you came along and you were a problem for me like, right away, and my excuse for a while was that you were too young. No matter what, you were too fucking young for me. And for a while it worked.” 

“Come _ on_,” Peter says, exasperated.

“I’m serious, and trust me, a _ lot _ of people agree. But we work pretty well together, don’t we?” Wade splays a hand out on his belly and Peter nods, tracing his knuckles with shaky fingers. “So why ruin a good thing, right? I thought I could ignore it, I thought we could be friends, I thought I could keep you far enough away for it to be fine. I thought that would — but you just, fuck, you make it hard… not to. Want it. Want you.” He pauses. “And now I hear how ‘you make it hard’ sounds.”

Wade’s arm tightens where it hugs him around the middle and Peter has to swallow a few times, taking a shuddering breath. He’s at a loss.

“I like you a lot,” is what he finally comes up with, his cheeks heating. A simple statement of fact. “You confuse me so much and sometimes I’m not sure if I actually know anything about you and that freaks me out. But I still like you. I don’t know what that’s about.”

“I like you, too,” Wade says on a laugh, his body moving against Peter’s. “I can’t believe you don’t hate me. _ What _ is wrong with you? Why don’t you hate me?”

“I mean, even if I did I wouldn’t be able to forever,” Peter says. He’s hyper-aware of everywhere they’re touching, can’t stop focusing on all the places their skin meets. “You kinda saved my life.”

“That was _ extremely _ brave and selfless of me, wasn’t it?”

“Total hero-making moment,” Peter says, smiling. He sighs at the barely there brush of lips to the back of his neck and says, because he can’t help it, “I think sometimes I fixate on stuff and I go all in without really… knowing what I’m doing. My friend told me I think I’m smarter than everybody. I think that has something to do with it.”

“You _ are _ smarter than everybody, though,” Wade says, sweet and honest.

Peter laughs, embarrassed. “Not even a little bit.”

“You’re smarter than me,” Wade reasons.

Peter starts to protest and then Wade nudges his jaw with his nose, scattering a few kisses along the line of it, sinking his teeth into the spot where it meets his neck. His lips are wet and warm. Under him, Peter melts.

“I think I fixated on you without actually knowing you, that’s what I’m saying,” Peter says when he comes to. “And I’m sorry for that. But I think I want to, like. Figure it out. Know you.”

There’s no reply. Peter wriggles, tries to twist around to look at him. And then, “You’re something else.”

They make out for a while, exploring each other in all the ways they hadn’t gotten to before, and Peter is aware of the uncomfortable twinge in his chest but it’s easy to pay it no mind when Wade’s so close. He grinds back clumsily, experimentally, and it makes Wade groan. Peter can’t move very fast or very much but he can definitely _ move_, which he does until his stupid phone alarm, the one for the painkillers he’s supposed to take every six hours, sounds off, startling them both into embarrassed laughter.

With Wade’s help he lifts himself up on his elbows and downs the tablets with a mouthful of water. Wade watches him the whole time, his eyes so affectionate Peter can barely stand to look back. The sun, having risen somewhere in between the apologies and the dry humping, slants in through the blinds and throws beams of early morning light over Wade’s skin. He looks good and Peter tells him so.

“You’re so nuts,” Wade says, awed. “That’s what it is, you’re fucking _ nuts_.”

Settling against each other, they talk for a while, saying the things they’d been holding back, getting braver with each confession: Wade tells Peter, in hushed tones, about the cancer and Vanessa and Russell, about the family he found despite it all, and Peter talks for the first time in a long time about his parents, about Ben, about those first few nightmarish months with his powers.

They start and then they can’t stop but they keep their voices low, almost like if they speak quietly enough it really can stay between them, in this room, in Peter’s bed, the sun peeking in. They hold on to each other, like they’ll float away if they don’t.

“You scare the shit out of me,” Wade says eventually, and Peter nods just once, passing out before he can make it to the second.

*

**FIVE MONTHS LATER**

Swinging somewhere between Brooklyn and Queens, Peter gets hit in the face with a drone. It’s seriously not a big deal, but the news spreads through the team and it’s enough to inspire a Cap Meeting (™) about Avenger Off-Duty Safety (™). He and Kate are invited even though they’re “technically” not Avengers.

“Clint’s annoyed I’m here because usually he can just pretend he doesn’t know what anyone’s saying,” she says, pulling her sunglasses over her eyes and sinking low into her chair. Under the table, Lucky naps on her feet.

“What’d you say about me, girly?” Clint asks, looking up from where he’s (poorly) playing Angry Birds.

“Okay, guys, thanks for coming,” Cap says, getting to his feet at the head of the table. Mr. Stark, at the other end, looks amused when Peter catches his eye. “I’m going to try to make this quick, I just thought it’d be a good idea to do a refresh on the general protocol for keeping ourselves safe when we’re not actually saving the city.”

Thor raises his hand. “Why am I here? I’ve never been hit in the face with a drone.”

“Twenty bucks he doesn’t know what a drone is,” Colonel Rhodes mutters. Mr. Stark shakes his hand discreetly.

“Thor, what do you think a drone is?” Black Widow asks, interested now.

“It’s a type of bird,” Thor says, pure confidence.

Cap sets his hands on the table. “That’s not really the important —” 

Peter sits up a little straighter. “Can I defend myself? It’s not that I wasn’t being safe, it’s just that I —” Before he can finish the thought his phone interrupts, blasting the chorus to “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” as Wade’s grinning face flashes across the screen. Every time he tries to change the song Wade changes it back. Peter really just needs to figure out how to lock him out for good. He silences the ringer. “Anyway, I —”

“I’m sorry, I would love to know who _ you _ think Celine Dion is,” Falcon says, pointing at Peter.

“Wilson’s Canadian,” Black Widow supplies, trading knowing eye rolls with Falcon.

“And _ old_,” Mr. Stark grouses. He’s coming around, or at least that’s what Ms. Potts said last time Peter had been over for babysitting duty. “And, you know, a million other —”

“Tony,” Colonel Rhodes sighs, like he’s heard this one before.

“She sang the song in that really old movie,” Peter says, eliciting a few groans from the room.

“_In aviation and in space, a drone refers to an unpiloted aircraft or spacecraft_,” Thor announces, reading off his phone. “That doesn’t sound right.”

“_Guys_,” Cap tries.

Peter’s phone rings again and when he sends Wade to voicemail he receives five outrage texts in succession, all complete with corresponding outrage emojis:

_ did u just send me to THE ANSWERING MACHINE _

_ if i wanted to talk to a robot id stop ignoring cables words w friends requests _

_ JUST CALL ME GLENN CLOSE BC I WILL NOT BE IGNORED _

_ seriously tho im outside and i got something DOPE to show u _

_ also hiiiii i miss u _

“Sorry,” Peter says, aiming an apologetic smile toward Cap. “I gotta go — catch me up later?”

“If he’s leaving, legally I can also leave,” Kate tells Clint.

“I should’ve expected this,” Cap says, nodding his goodbye to Peter.

“You did great, baby,” White Wolf says, squeezing Cap’s shoulder.

Grinning, Peter shoots a text back to Wade — _ THOR DOESNT KNOW WHAT A DRONE ISSSSS _— as he takes the elevator all the way down to the lobby, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

Wade’s waiting for him near the curb, wearing aviators and one of Peter’s old debate club t-shirts under his sweatshirt, hood pulled over his head. He’s leaning against an eyesore of a red motorcycle, arms crossed.

Peter jogs to him, checking the bike for a license plate — yep, definitely belongs to someone else. “What’d I say about stealing stuff?”

“I know, but this guy deserved it,” Wade says, tugging Peter closer by the hem of his jacket.

“You say that every time you steal something,” Peter says, allowing himself to be distracted by a breathless greeting kiss.

“Hi,” Wade murmurs.

“Hey,” Peter says, bumping their noses together.

“You gotta tell me about this Thor thing.” With a peck to his cheek, Wade moves to straddle the bike. There are no helmets to be found and he seriously isn’t the best driver and Peter already knows he’s getting on this thing regardless, but sometimes he has to try to reason with himself first. “And let’s get out of here before Stark has his people give me a ticket. He’s done it before.”

Peter climbs astride, loops his arms around Wade, rests his chin on his shoulder. When Wade notices what he’s doing he laughs, a short, happy burst of sound, and presses a featherlight kiss between Peter’s eyes.

“So the drone,” Peter shouts over the roar of the engine.

“_Tell. Me. Everything._”


End file.
